Saturday, January 02, 1999

Jennifer Ditchburn
National Post

Pedro Pupa Pena points to the man beside him in the weathered black-and-white snapshot -- "This is Che Guevara," he says casually, as if anyone could mistake that familiar rugged figure beneath the trees.

Mr. Pena, 61, was all of 18 when he left to live in the forests of the Sierra Maestra for three years, holed up with 100 or so freedom fighters under the direction of the Argentinian expatriate and a fresh-faced Fidel Castro.

"Che was very valiant, a natural leader. He worried about his soldiers, but he wouldn't let anyone get close to him. He was very guarded," he recalls. "Fidel, ah, Fidel. He's someone who very quickly wins your affection. He was very spontaneous and very natural."

This was the life romanticized by Herbert Matthews, the New York Times reporter, during a trip in 1957 -- the altruistic young freedom fighters waging a guerrilla war from their mountain hideaway against the corrupt military regime of Fulgencio Batista.

Forty years ago yesterday, Mr. Batista fled to the Dominican Republic with $40-million (US), and Mr. Castro's ragtag band of disenchanted professionals and peasants rode into Santiago de Cuba to declare the triumph of their People's Revolution.

Today, Cubans are celebrating the anniversary with mixed emotions, reflecting on the accomplishments and failures of Mr. Castro's socialist dream.

Their state still promotes the same romantic vision of heroes like Che, the communist struggle, and the fight against U.S. imperialism, through the government controlled press and the omnipresent propaganda posters.

Murals in downtown Havana boast about the country's system of universal health care, free education and the integration of women into the work force -- elements that came into full force by the late 1960s through an aggressive campaign of nationalization and centralization.

Cubans don't hesitate to say they're proud of these gains, but they're also painfully aware of what they don't have. The rebel mythology is wearing thin.

The country plunged into a great period of economic difficulty in 1989, with the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Russian aid and trade to the island. Between 1989 and 1993, Cuba's gross domestic product plummeted from $19.3-billion to $10-billion. (All figures are in U.S. dollars.)

There are constant food and fuel shortages and blackouts. There's also an overriding sense of frustration with the bureaucracy, which seems to invent new laws and new taxes every few months. People pull on an imaginary Castro beard and exchange looks of resignation when faced with yet another inefficiency.

Even a veteran of the near-mythic Sierra Maestra rebel army such as Pedro Pena lives in less than comfortable conditions. The greying revolutionary's building is like any other in the sprawling city of 2.1 million people -- sorely neglected.

Dozens of apartment buildings collapse every year in the downtown core because of the lack of funds for basic upkeep. Often entire extended families cram into subdivided old mansions, separated by sheets hung on clotheslines or pieces of plywood.

But Mr. Pena, like other longtime Castro supporters, chooses to blame the U.S. trade embargo that has been in place since 1960. The Americans added insult to injury in 1992 with the Torricelli Act, which curtailed shipments of food and medical supplies from subsidiaries of U.S. companies.

"They've placed so many obstacles in our way -- what was the reason for this," he demands. "Would you like your neighbour to come and tell you how to rearrange your furniture or what to eat? That's what the U.S. wants to do."

Older Cubans in particular are more willing to overlook the weaknesses of the communist regime.

Dora Ventura, a 58-year-old retired bureaucrat with the Ministry of the Interior, can remember the hardships of Batista-era Cuba.

The economy had reached new heights when he headed the government, but little trickled down to the poor or middle-class. His rural police spent their days protecting the properties of rich plantation owners and U.S. investors. Ms. Ventura says she couldn't go to school before the revolution because it was private after Grade 7.

"We often didn't have anything to eat, my dad was just a truck driver. I've lived through capitalism, and when you're poor like we were, you always felt like you were on the verge of dying."

Today, she lives cheek-by-jowl with two daughters, their children, and husbands in her ground-floor apartment. It's one of those Havana homes that still has some pre-Castro grandeur -- glorious pieces of 80-year-old stained glass, dusty crystal chandeliers and wood beams on three-metre-high ceilings.

The place is immaculately clean, but like most Cuban homes, sparsely decorated. A paper Christmas tree covered in tinsel sits under a gold-painted lamp in a corner of the room. Knick-knacks and souvenirs, that in Canada would have long been relegated to the basement, are religiously arranged on the shelves.

Her cupboards and refrigerators tell more of the story. Meals are spartan, based on the rice and beans that are provided to any citizen through a rationing system.

Luxuries such as tomatoes, fresh fish or beer are available through the dollar stores and open-air markets that Mr. Castro approved in 1993. People are forced to scrape together U.S. dollars any way they can to afford these perks, whether it's driving a taxi or selling sex.

Ms. Ventura can't even go to a neighbourhood laundromat to wash her family's clothes -- it and others closed years ago because of lack of money and fuel.

But she makes no apologies for the revolution she supported as a young woman. She's still moved by the memory of travelling into the countryside with other young revolutionaries to teach peasants how to read and write.

"We're going to come out of this -- at least everyone eats here, everyone goes to school. If I don't have a steak to eat tomorrow, I don't care."

Yissel and Ania, both 20-year-old university students, roll their eyes and groan when they hear the nostalgia and sentimentality pouring out around them for the 40th anniversary celebrations.

Young Cubans are perhaps the most troubled segment of the population, faced with a revolution they were born into but didn't choose.

"Older people who were protagonists, who fought for their cause, can't see the reality that things have changed and the old ways don't work anymore,'' says Yissel, lounging under the trees at Havana's beloved Coppelia ice cream stop.

"It might have been good for a certain period of time, but not now.''

Students in other countries are often at the heart of political change, but in today's Cuba there is little room for expression. Yissel and Ania asked that their last names be withheld for fear of repercussions.

They explain that although there is a student association on the campus of the University of Havana that is supposed to be autonomous, it is dominated by Castro supporters and rarely speaks out. Critics of the state more often than not end up in prison after a summary trial.

The two young women are used to a life of challenges, waiting as long as three hours for a city bus, the gua-gua, to take them across town, for example.

The dollar stores sprinkled across the city sell CD players and platform shoes, but their chances of ever owning these items are slim to none.

Textbooks are at a premium at the university. Most of their research is done from photocopies of the art books professors store in their office.

And then there's the cafeteria food. It seems like a gripe of students the world over, but in Cuba the state-subsidized lunch is all many can afford to eat.

"You should see what they give us. It's free, but it's not much better than people would give to dogs,'' says Ania, whose parents earn about $25 a month. "In other places, students would protest this kind of things, but at schools things are so controlled. There is no way of expressing yourself freely."

Hope is not something that enters into young Cubans' vocabulary, they explain.

Job prospects are grim in the city, and with no possibility of leaving the country to find work, the future seems full of limitations.

Sometimes Canadians turn up in their classes as part of exchange programs, but neither student could think of a classmate who had participated in the reciprocal trip.

Yissel says her friends feel trapped -- unable to see a change on the horizon or a solution to the economic impasse. Mr. Castro maintains his iron grip on the island, reiterating with every marathon speech that Cuba will stay faithful to the revolution's communist ideals.

For the young, the revolution seems interminable.

"Here, we say there are two embargoes -- one imposed by the Americans and one imposed by our own government,'' Yissel says.

"I don't know what they'd do if the Americans lifted the embargo -- I wonder how they'll justify themselves."